As their intensive Beethoven and Boulez series steams onward, you might expect the players of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to be wilting a little. Not a bit of it. This fourth concert held the work that many consider Beethoven’s finest symphonic gem, the Seventh – and if anyone’s mojo needed a shot in the arm, that was the place to be.

After
the opening Eighth Symphony, though, the stage was given for the rest of the
first half to just one performer – Michael Barenboim, the violinist son of the
conductor – plus live electronics by IRCAM’s Gilbert Nouno, the computer music
designer, and Jérémie Henrot, the sound engineer. In their capable hands, Boulez’s
Anthèmes 2 proved a modern marvel,
holding its own beside Beethoven’s best.

This
work from 1997 grows as if organically out of the strophic forms of psalms that
Boulez remembered hearing in childhood. The sounds of Barenboim Jnr’s violin are
refracted into a bedazzlement of electronic transformations which cascade down
from a range of speakers around the perimeter of the ceiling. The electronics
are every bit as virtuoso a feat as the violin playing: the second episode’s
pizzicato sets up a multifaceted hailstorm, while at other moments the soloist’s
cantilena is surrounded by what feels like a phantom string ensemble. Boulez’s
intensity of sonic colour seems to pick up and transform a kernel of the
sound-colour notions of his teacher, Olivier Messiaen, in almost the same way
that the electronics work on the violin’s tone. Mesmerising.

The
evening started with Beethoven’s compact Eighth Symphony, dominated by focus,
control and what sometimes felt like over-restrained tempi. But its elemental nature
shone through – powerful rhythms, the interdependence of the instrumental
voices, the heart-of-the-matter paragraphs; after the interval these qualities came
to fruition in the Seventh.

Barenboim ran this
symphony as a giant single narrative, almost without a break. As he shaped both
microcosm and macrocosm – from the detailed phrasing of the second movement’s
fugal episode to the overall pace that saved the real letting-rip for last – the
orchestra began to move and breathe as one. And we found ourselves in one of
those tremendous moments when music does what it does best: unifying performers
and audience as everybody simply loses themselves in the shared energy of the
experience. At the conclusion Barenboim stood triumphant, milking the ovation –
as well he might.